


Two Sides of the Same Coin

by riverchic1998



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dark, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Mention of Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverchic1998/pseuds/riverchic1998
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter moves to the window, his knee hitching up onto the sill as he looks back at her. “I killed Laura. You killed Victoria. The fact that neither of us regrets our actions to protect those we have left just makes us more dangerous.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Sides of the Same Coin

**Author's Note:**

> You know when your beta sends this back with "That's just fucked up, babe," as the only comment, you have issues. That being said, thank you to the lovely [Jo Anne Storm](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jo_anne_storm/profile) for the beta and the prompt that this stemmed from. 
> 
> Warnings for mentions of canon character death and emotional manipulation.

Human flesh gives way too easily. She’s hunted game before, a deer, but the moment she saw the light go out of the glossy eyes, she wanted to instantly take it back and her father pulled her away from the sight. Shooting arrows at targets is different than shooting into live flesh.

She likes shooting into werewolf flesh much more than shooting into the flank of a deer. 

So really, she’s not shooting into human flesh. They’re nothing but monsters; monsters that rip into muscle and bone and rend humans—innocent humans—helpless. They’re killing machines. 

_Allison! Stop! Please!_

She releases another arrow and it sinks into the monster’s dark shoulder with her next exhale. She’s putting them down, like the hunter she was born to be, the hunter her mother would be proud of.

………………………………..

Allison wakes with a start, but she doesn’t dart up in bed or scream. She hates reliving that moment. A breeze blows from her open window and cools the sweat on her brow. Her right hand, tucked under her pillow, clenches around her mini-crossbow. She sits up and aims the crossbow across from her bed, at the figure leaning against her vanity.

“So glad to see your reflexes are sharp.”

Her shoulders tense, but her aim remains steady. “As sharp as my arrows. Would you like to see?”

“No need,” Peter replies, leaning forward slightly to switch on the lamp, crossing his arms after. “I heard that your trigger finger is a bit…twitchy.” His amiable grin turns sinister in the shadows. “I’ve already died once. I’d hate to have to haunt Miss Martin again.”

Allison narrows her eyes. “Why are you here? Are you going to kill me? My father will put a wolfsbane bullet in you before you get off the front lawn.”

Peter rolls his eyes. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t let you reach a weapon. I like having the advantage in a fight and my weapon of choice is always within arms’ reach.” He holds up his hand in the lamp light and Allison observes the nails lengthen into sharp talons. Her grip tightens when she realizes that he’s holding up the hand that ripped out Kate’s throat. “You remember, don’t you?”

She doesn’t like that he knows what’s in her head. “Get out or I’ll put an arrow in your heart.”

His grin never wavers. “If you wanted to kill me, you wouldn’t sit around and listen to what I have to say. Your threats are empty.” Peter tilts his head to the side mockingly. “This is where you break out the teenaged emo poetry about how your empty threats match your empty soul.”

“You don’t know me,” Allison replies with clenched teeth. “Writing that ‘teenaged emo poetry’ implies guilt.”

His eyebrow slides up. For a moment, Allison believes she has surprised him. “Well, well.” Peter rolls his shoulders back. “The littlest Argent knows how to twist her lies.”

“I’m not lying,” Allison snaps. “I don’t regret my actions.”

His smile sharpens. “Oh, now that’s a lie, and I don’t even have to hear your heartbeat to know that. But the question is, with so many actions stacked against you, which do you feel guilty over? Shooting your school friends full of arrows so they could be tortured? Attacking your true love? Standing by while his best friend was beaten by your grandfather?”

Allison never drops her crossbow. She hitches her chin and stares at him dispassionately, watching him work out the answer that she won’t reveal herself. It’s none of his business. She’s half-tempted to shoot him in his thigh or arm just to make him leave so she can go back to sleep. “Stop trying to psycho-analyze me.”

Peter chuckles and looks away from her, dropping his gaze to her desk, which is now empty except for leftover notes from school and specs for a bow she wants her father to buy her since he ruined her old one. He dismisses them all. “No pictures? Trophies? Jewelry?”

“Stop,” she says harsher. “Say what you want and get out. How many times do I have to say it for you to actually do it?”

“I’m just trying to understand my counterpart,” he replies lightly, running his fingers over the notes. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

Her grip tightens so much that the plastic in her hand creaks. Peter’s gaze snaps up and his smirk widens. “What’s this?” he murmurs, but she can still hear. 

“I am nothing like you, you monster,” she huffs, anger making her whole body vibrate. Her back is so tense that her spine pops. “I keep innocent people safe from creatures like you.”

Some of the humor leaves Peter’s stance and she becomes more wary. “Oh, you and I are more alike than you’d think. For instance, we both lost people close to us, and went on a trail to make those responsible suffer, even if the intent of those responsible was completely different.”

“Derek bit my _mother_. You know that she wouldn’t become a wer—a _monster_ , so he should have driven the knife in her chest himself. You killed my Aunt Kate right in front of me.”

Peter takes a small step forward. “And Kate locked me and my family in the basement, lined it with ash, then doused the house with gasoline and lit it on fire. Who, exactly, is the monster in this scenario?”

Allison doesn’t answer him. Peter takes another step forward. 

“I only cared about revenge.”

She scoffs. “You use that as an excuse. That night in the school, you killed the janitor. How was that revenge?”

Instead of getting angry like she expects, Peter simply raises his eyebrow. “And how is capturing two betas who have never harmed a human, then torturing them for hours, revenge? How is stabbing Isaac and betraying your true love revenge for a single death they had no hand in?”

“I stand by my decisions. All of them.”

Peter cocks his head, gazing at her curiously. “You do, don’t you? I thought that certainly this is what you would feel guilt over. But you don’t care that you used two innocent werewolves as your personal pincushion or that you nearly killed the young boy you defied your family for. Interesting.”

“It’s really not. What will I actually have to do to make you leave? Unlike some people, I’m not nocturnal. I need sleep.”

Her shoulders are starting to ache, but she keeps her grip steady. One sign of weakness and he would pounce. Instead, he ignores her, dismissing her as an insult, looking around her room again. Her eyes narrow in anger, her bow following his movements and he tread across the carpet. 

“Do you ever wonder where we began? This cycle of rage and death we seem stuck in?”

“What cycle?” she snaps. “You and your kind poison everything around you. You killed my Aunt Kate, you killed that bus driver and the two men in the woods, and the janitor. You killed your own niece!”

Peter continues on as if he hasn’t heard her. “This recent cycle seems to have a theme. You attack the betas because Derek bit your mother. Derek bit your mother because she was attempting to kill Scott. She was attempting to kill Scott because he was having sex with you.”

Peter spins on his heel and stares at her mockingly. “I wonder, if you had done as your mother requested and stopped seeing Scott, would she still be alive?”

Allison inhales sharply and her heartbeat, which had been steady, starts to beat quickly. “Ah, there it is. The regret.”

“You know _nothing_ about me.”

To her horror, her eyes start to water and her breathing becomes erratic. Her hand holding the crossbow shakes. 

“I lived innocently until someone ripped my family away from me. The grief consumed me, the need for revenge overwhelming my sense, leading me to hurt those I would have cast aside in any other situation.”

She thinks back to when her family first moved to Beacon Hills and the family she lost since then—her aunt, her grandfather, her mother. Countless other friends of the family, hunters, who wanted to help them in their time of mourning. She remembers the bodies she ran over, tunnel vision focusing on Derek so she could put a bolt through his heart. As much as she wants to deny the similarities, doubt creeps into her mind, most likely the reason Peter showed up to talk in the first place, to throw her off her game and make her weak. 

Just as she opens her mouth to deny any connection between them, Peter moves to the window, his knee hitching up onto the sill as he looks back at her. “I killed Laura. You killed Victoria. The fact that neither of us regrets our actions to protect those we have left just makes us more dangerous.”

She drops the crossbow, having not moved it since Peter stepped to the window. There is no point in keeping up the charade. He isn’t here to hurt her and she is too _exhausted_ to bother pulling the trigger. 

Peter shakes his head, and he seems genuinely regretful. “We’re two sides of the same coin, Allison, and we both know what the other is capable of. If you want to keep the cycle going, then kill Derek and avenge your mother, but know that you will follow in Kate’s death if you harm him. I imagine Chris will put a bullet in my heart for harming you, and then who is left? A pack of betas with no control and the weakest of hunters with no leader. The town will be burned to the ground.”

Allison takes a deep breath, her mind clearing. She remembers Gerard’s words, about the poison that werewolves whisper into human ears, twisting the truth and manipulating them until they would willingly risk death to become monsters. She raises the crossbow in a flash and pulls the trigger, a bolt flying through the air and landing with a thunk in the wall, inches from Peter’s head. He doesn’t flinch, but the message is clear enough, and his lips start to curl back in a snarl. 

“I’ve always liked fire,” she replies.

**Author's Note:**

> This came from a prompt from Jo, who told me to write a fragment of a story from the POV of either a) a character who's canonically considered a villain or b) any character who does something wrong and gets away with it and enjoys the fruits of their crime. I had to really get into their head and show why their actions made sense to them. My first thought was Peter, because he's lovely, but then I thought of Allison, then I started to notice the comparisons between the two. And here we are.


End file.
